Daisy Kenyon (1947)

Daisy Kenyon (1947) is a classic Otto Preminger lousy husband romantic triangle arrogant commercial artist melodrama noir-style moral wrongness feature film with Joan Crawford, Dana Andrews, and Henry Fonda.

Preminger’s sensibility clashed with the shadows. His modus operandum, like a smoke-filled room, ran counter to the polished veneer of society. Daisy Kenyon, a dame caught in the crossfire, danced on the edge of desire and danger.

The two leading men, a fedora and a military hat, did anybody write a book about the hat motif and codes and modes of symbology in noir. They had better had. Noir needs hat analysis. Hat analysis may be brought to bear in any and many a film noir, a good example we could enjoy might be Ramrod, starring Lana Turner.

A Woman's Face (1941)

A Woman's Face (1941) is a fantastical hard-luck-lady flashback courtroom film noir blackmail tale of gender expectation, bitterness and plastic surgery.

One of several plastic surgery miracle movies made in the era, it seemed like the trope and myth of the plastic surgeon and face exchange being ideal narrative material on the big screen.

Most meaningfully and in the terms of the noir universe these are Dark Passage (1947), Black Dragons (1942), Nora Prentiss (1947), Stolen Face (1952), G-Men Never Forget (1948), Dead End (1937), The Second Face (1950), It Happened in Hollywood (1935), and then She Demons (1958) a strangely far out genre find, Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), and with The Raven (1935), that might be enough for now, although others will materialise, that is certain.

This Woman is Dangerous (1952)

This Woman is Dangerous (1952) is a screen-scorching lady gangster dilemma woman-based crime drama with a timely titular suggestion concerning the moral and health and safety proclivities of a gender-based social entity played by Joan Crawford.

A slightly peculiar air of crime fantasy permeates this oddly composed domesticated film noir.

This Woman Is Dangerous is a classic 1952 film noir and crime drama produced by Warner Bros. The movie features Joan Crawford, David Brian, and Dennis Morgan, and tells the story of a woman involved with the criminal underworld who faces the challenge of losing her sight. 

The screenplay, crafted by Geoffrey Homes and George Worthing Yates, draws from a narrative by Bernard Girard. Felix E. Feist directed the film, with Robert Sisk serving as producer.

Sudden Fear (1952)

Sudden Fear (1952) is a paranoid woman psychological stalking thriller film noir from the golden age of sinister and romantic wife's suspicion of her husband pictures.

Ever since Suspicion indeed, on the one hand, and Rebecca on the other, volumes of reel of film have told the tales of the paranoid woman of the era, she is the very sight of the times and the very words sudden fear themselves may be used to describe noir itself, it's attack vogue, it's play in the dark nature, the insuring lustre of stars on the screen, reworking in this case the themes, of suspicion, and the key player in the play of death is a dictating machine, a media within the media.

Flamingo Road (1949)

Flamingo Road (1949) is a woman against the world Southern local bully class-status drama hostess-at-a-roadhouse film noir of complicated romances, and double crosses.

Directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Joan Crawford, Zachary Scott, Sydney Greenstreet, and David Brian, the screenplay for Flamingo Road (1949) was written by Robert Wilder. It was based on a 1946 play written by Wilder and his wife, Sally, which in turn was based on Robert Wilder’s 1942 novel of the same name.

The plot follows an ex-carnival dancer who marries a local businessman to seek revenge on a corrupt political boss who had her railroaded into prison. Some of the more salacious aspects of the novel were downplayed in the film due to the Hollywood Production Code.

The Damned Don't Cry (1950)

The Damned Don't Cry (1950) is a flashback rags-to-riches-lousy husband woman in the workplace corporate gangland crime kingpin's moll film noir, with Joan Crawford and David Brian, as well as a career highlight from noir superstar Steve Cochran

With Joan Crawford and an incredible four husbands in one movie, there are questions galore in the damned darkness of The Damned Don't Cry (1950).

Joan Crawford's character starts with a husband that she does not rate, even though it is Richard Egan. But he's too controlling and penny-pinching for her, and she is a film noir hero for whom enough is not enough.

Rephrasing that, this is a common enough film noir lesson: you are not satisfied with your mediocre and quotidian suburban working life, or as in this case, a rather blue collar existence on an oilfield.

Harriet Craig (1950)

Harriet Craig (1950) is a neurotic woman lady noir with high drama, rudeness and female perfectionism ramped to its psychological worst.

The story stars Joan Crawford and Wendell Corey and it is impossible to look away from either. 

Joan Crawford plays Harriet who is the suggestive opposite of the lousy husband, her husband is pretty nice, while she however is destructively controlling about everything, and in the manner of the human comedy, she explores the fringes of madness in the bourgeois dream, and is representative of a kind of stylistic madness.

Harriet Craig was directed by Vincent Sherman, produced by William Dozier, and distributed by Columbia Pictures. Harriet Craig is the second of three cinematic collaborations between Sherman and Crawford, the others being The Damned Don't Cry (1950) and Goodbye, My Fancy (1951).

Possessed (1947)

Possessed (1947) is high period paranoid woman family mystery amnesiac film noir with complexities galore, and starring Joan Crawford, Van Heflin and Raymond Massey.

Working wonders with the flashback structure, Possessed starts in dramatic style with a woman on the wander through some vacant city streets, murmuring only the name 'David' to herself.

The opening, which punches hard upon the perennial themes of urban isolation and amnesiac or damaged individuals lost within these concreted jungle confines, opens the door to frame an entirely flashback-told story of a woman called Louise Howell, played by Joan Crawford, who is presumably the possessed character of the title.

Johnny Guitar (1954)

Johnny Guitar (1954) is a bluff and luridly coloured fantasy Western, that has found its way on to the film noir style sheet by dint of its role reversin' fun, and its hard hitting characters. 

Joan Crawford is a saloon owner, holding on tight to her all-American right to stay on her land and not have it bought up by the corporate or in this case local interests who have their own ideas about the railroad that's rolling through.

The townspeople don't want her, for reasons that are not immediately obvious. 

But she has a nemesis; and just as she leads the saloon with its bored but well dressed staff of croupiers, the good townsfolk of this small and wild Arizona settlement, are lead by a similarly dangerous firebrand of a woman, in this case Emma small - - played by Mercedes McCambridge, whose vengeful vendetta seems to want her to see Joan Crawford driven out of town and hanged.

Romance, hatred and violence combine in Johnny Guitar to create one of the most popular noir Westerns in the canon.

Mildred Pierce (1945)

Mildred Pierce (1945) is  a Michael Curtiz James M. Cain flashback but barely any voiceover detourned woman's picture murder mystery femme fatale female success story lousy husband children-in-film-noir family tragedy tragic love triangle rags to riches to darkened beach house classic film noir starring Joan Crawford, Ann Blyth, Eve Arden, Zachary Scott, Jack Carson, Bruce Bennett and Veda Ann Borg.

A classic film noir indeed, and also a great melodrama, a story which from the off when it bangs iunto beach house action followed by a suicidal moment at the docks, this melodrama is not a film noir in its immediate sea-sweeping seconds, and the theme music is that of a woman's picture, that so-called real entity of the era, the project that is detoruned ce noir la.